Safekeeping (28 page)

“Don't you have a hat?”

“No.”

Should she tell him that she knows very well that he does have a hat? A brown fedora with a black ribbon—a green feather reserved for Shabbat and holidays. But to say so felt like an admission, while not saying so also felt like one. She decided, no matter, a felt fedora wasn't appropriate for picking cotton.

“You could have requested a tembel hat from the clothing house.”

“Today's my first day in the fields. I didn't think of it. I'll be fine.”

She couldn't let this pasty man, still too thin, work all afternoon in the sun with his head uncovered. She took off her own hat and held it out.

“Take mine.”

Franz stopped walking, forcing her to stop. He looked down at the beige bucket hat.

“That's kind. But, of course, no thank you.”

“Why? Are you afraid of messing up your hairdo?”

He smiled and touched his hair. “No, it's not that.”

She gazed off to the side, holding back her own smile. She had really embarrassed him. When she had regained the air of a person who only happened to know better and was just doing her duty, she turned back to him. “You don't understand what it's like in the fields. You're going to get sunstroke. You must take my hat.”

“Then you won't have one.”

“I'm used to the sun. And, let's be frank, I'm in better shape than you.”

He nodded. “Yes, you're in great shape.”

Was that a lewd remark? Pretending not to have heard it that way, she proffered the hat. Franz's shoulders dropped in mock defeat. He reached for it, and Ziva let go of it too early. Why did she do that? She apologized, diving to catch the hat, while Franz lunged for it too, and they knocked heads.

Laughing, Franz swept the hat from the dusty ground. Ziva straightened up, her face warm as if the midday sun were already here. Franz brushed off the hat, pulled it onto his head, and gave her a wide closed-lip smile. The floppy thing looked so wrong on him, she couldn't help but snort and shake her head.

All day Ziva and Franz picked cotton off the dry bushes one row down from one another, along with five or six other pickers. She kept messing up, plucking the stalks off with the bolls. Then she had to waste time picking the brittle twigs off the cotton, cutting her fingers in the process. The fluff stuck to the blood. The day before she'd only pulled off a couple of stalks.

Why had Franz broken their months of awkward silence? Or was that awkward silence just a figment of her imagination? No, she had caught him watching her many times, hadn't she? On Friday nights, while everyone sang around the campfire, she would catch him observing her from the other side of the flames. If he kept his eyes on her when she caught him, then she could have chalked it up to mere lechery. If he had tried to speak to her sooner, tried to flirt with her, this too would have defused everything. Instead, he always turned away, which Ziva found disconcerting, so she tried not to look at him. To do this, however, she had to keep track of his whereabouts, and that made his presence loom even larger, so that in the end their eyes met less often, but when they did, the effects were keener.

Ziva discreetly looked over at him now and found him doing the same. This time when their eyes met, he didn't look away. He gave her another wide smile and a tug on the hat's droopy brim. Should she smile back? What for? No, she should make no response at all, just go back to work.

The day wore on, and the sun grew vicious. Eventually, Ziva got into the right mind-set, picking the cotton efficiently and gracefully.

When the sun dipped behind Mount Carmel and the other pickers ambled toward a well-deserved dinner, Franz hung back. Was he waiting for her? He kept glancing in her direction.

“Go ahead!” she called. “I'm going to work a little longer.”

Tembel hat in his hands, he walked over to where she stood at the end of a row of harvested plants, not a boll to be seen.

“I'd say we worked enough for one day, don't you think?”

“I'd feel better if I did one more bush.”

She wanted to insist that she usually wasn't this slow, but she couldn't risk giving him the impression that he had distracted her.

“Do you want me to help?”

“No. Really, I'm fine.”

“Well, thank you for your hat.” He held it out and then withdrew it. “Actually, it's rather sweaty. I'll wash it first.”

She extended her hand. “Don't be silly. Give it to me. I'll drop it in the laundry.”

He hesitated, as if unsure what would be the mannerly thing to do.

Before he had a chance to decide, she whisked it from his hands. “Anyway, I didn't lend you
my
hat. It's the kibbutz's hat. I personally don't own anything.”

“Nothing? Not one little thing?”

She shook her head.

“Don't you want to own something? Just one little thing that belongs to you and nobody else?”

“No. Whatever I want for me, I want for everybody.”

Franz buried his hands in his pockets and regarded her, pensively. “You have a real sense of purpose, Ziva. That must be nice.”

Ziva started on a new bush while Franz walked back toward the kibbutz. Every once in a while, she would look up and find him farther down the path. After she picked the bush clean, she walked down the rows the others had picked, gleaning the missed fluffs.

When it was well into twilight, she started back toward the kibbutz. As she walked down the dirt path between the cotton, she turned the hat in her hands. Sweat darkened the band. His sweat.

The path grew dimmer and seemed to lengthen with every step.

At last sleep descended on Ziva, with the kibbutz as it used to be, just up ahead, a few lovely lights on a dusky plateau.

“O
fir-chik!”

At least that's what Ofir thought he heard. He turned to see who was coming through the door. He had never been a popular kid, and yet every afternoon a different delegation of his peers stopped by his studio apartment, leading him to believe they were taking turns. On visiting duty today was Hadas the guffawer, Gingi of the orange Isfro, and handsome, cooler-than-thou Ido.

Hadas, dark hair pulled into a ponytail to show off her feather earrings, came up to the side of his bed, saying, “Hey there, Ofir.” Ido stood next to her. “What's up?” Gingi stationed at the foot of the mattress.

After the hellos always came the uncomfortable silence while his visitors scrambled for conversation, something other than what would've been the go-to topics, his music or their army service. Ido said something about it being hot, though his tanned, chiseled face showed no sweat. He tapped a pack of red Marlboros against his palm.

The same kids who used to tease Ofir for his Mozart and pimples now regarded him as a hero. But what had he done? In the hospital, when he told the other patient in his room, a middle-aged man who'd also been on the bus, that it didn't make sense that they were being treated like heroes when all they had done was be at the wrong place at the wrong time, the man, staring down at his missing leg, claimed it was heroic that anyone in this country boarded a bus. He had a point, but then the people visiting him were also heroes. He wanted his specialness to come from his music.

Ofir pointed at Ido's pack of Marlboros. “I'll have one.”

Ido shot a look at the other two visitors. “You sure you can smoke?”

“What?” The
what
came out before he had a chance to catch it.

Ido raised his voice: “Your mom said not to give you cigarettes.”

Ofir still couldn't hear him over the whistle in his head, and he seemed not to have said the same thing. He nodded. “Yes.”

Ido shrugged and lit a cigarette for him. Ofir took a drag while Gingi straightened the mirror from the kasbah. That dark room full of mirrors felt like it belonged to a past life.

Hadas perched on the edge of his bed. Enunciating each syllable, she shouted: “IRIT was seen SNEA-KING out the BACK DOOR of YOSSI's HOUSE. Everyone says they are ha-ving AN AFFAIR.”

Ido sat in one of the visitor chairs. “You're KIDDING! IRIT? Which Irit?”

“Which Irit? One of them's TWELVE YEARS OLD.”

The strained shouting at each other reminded Ofir of the Purim plays they put on as children. No one could relax and have a real conversation when they had to talk like that. It was never long before his visitors gave up and gabbed amongst themselves while he sat there, nodding, pretending for their sakes that he could follow along. Ofir watched Hadas's head kick back as she laughed. He didn't even have quiet amid all this
ha ha ha
. He had the fucking whistle. And the doctors said the ringing would only worsen as his hearing diminished with age. By forty he could be completely deaf, alone with the whistle.

Fed up with everyone small-talking around him as if that were some kind of cure, he said, “I'll never hear music again.”

The three of them stopped talking, turned to him.

Gingi leaned on the bed. “Don't be silly, Ofir! Of course you will!”

“Or compose.”

Ido shook his head like someone privy to secret information. “Believe me, Ofir-chik, you will play in the greatest halls in Europe. I know it.”

Gingi said something else, which Ofir couldn't hear, except for “Beethoven,” which made him the hundredth person to say if Beethoven could do it, he could.

Hadas nodded, her feathers shimmying. “YOU—should—be—HAP-PY—you're—ALIVE!”

Ofir looked from one visitor to the other, debating whether to tell them that without music, he wasn't sure why he was alive. He decided against it. It would only lead to more inane lies and maxims and false cheer.

After they left, Ofir rose to open the blinds. He wasn't allowed direct sunlight on his skin, but it was late in the afternoon and none of the light fell directly on the bed. He climbed back under the sheets and stared at the golden square of light the window cast on the wall. The square faded as it ascended toward the ceiling. What was the sound of sunlight dying on a wall? A cello? He stopped the train of thought. What if he really couldn't compose again? How would he appreciate afternoon light?

“My son! My little boy!”

Ofir was startled to see his mother and stepfather standing at the end of his bed. His mother, seeming to have gained another twenty pounds, wore that maniacal smile she acquired the day of the bombing. She had never been a smiler. His reticent stepfather appeared as he always did, red faced, paunch pressing against his Haifa football shirt.

“We brought you dinner,” his mother said. “All your favorites.”

His stepfather slumped into a visitor's chair while his mother turned on the lights and placed one Tupperware after another onto the bed table: raisin and carrot salad, spicy black olives, couscous with pine nuts, roasted chicken. She laid out a napkin and fork with the flourish of a high-class waiter and settled into the seat next to her husband. Ofir suppressed his nausea to pull a string of meat off the chicken breast.

His mother, inappropriate smile in place, watched him chewing. Her eyes welled. Unable to stop herself, she asked the universe again: “My son? My only son?”

“Ima, I'm fine.”

“What did I do? Everyone I ever loved.”

Ofir glanced at his stepfather, who stared into space.

“Other people died, Ima. I'm not dead. I'm right here. I'm . . . I'm lucky to be alive.”

Tears streamed down her cheeks. She apologized, said she shouldn't let him see her so sad, that she should be cheering him up, not the other way around. She wiped her eyes and said through that smile: “Yes, yes. It could have been much worse. You can see out of your left eye. It's just your hearing,
some
of your hearing, but you are here. Here you are.”

“Here I am.” Ofir tore off another string of chicken.

His stepfather cleared his throat. “Eighty-five people were killed yesterday in that JCC in Argentina. Eighty-five!”

His mother nodded as if this should make them all feel luckier. Desperate to return the string of chicken to the Tupperware, Ofir struggled to find something to say that would distract his mother. “So do you know which way you're going to vote?”

“Vote?”

“Equal pay or salary scales?”

His mother shrugged, though Ofir knew she was going to vote for the status quo. His whole life he'd heard her say that she didn't know what she would have done if she hadn't lived on a kibbutz, having a baby without a husband or parents. And now he could imagine what she was thinking: that it might be hard for Ofir to hold a job with his impaired sight and hearing, that the kibbutz would take care of him for the rest of his life. His nausea swelled at the idea of spending the rest of his life working in the plastics factory. A far cry from Juilliard.

He turned to his stepfather. “And you?”

“Keep things as they are.”